Political Capital » nrahttp://go.bloomberg.com/political-capital
Politics blog featuring the latest news and analysis from Washington and the US. Political editors provide insights & data about today’s politics.Thu, 07 Aug 2014 19:48:32 +0000en-UShourly1http://wordpress.org/?v=4.2.2McConnell-Grimes: Ground Zerohttp://go.bloomberg.com/political-capital/2014-05-20/mcconnell-grimes-ground-zero/
http://go.bloomberg.com/political-capital/2014-05-20/mcconnell-grimes-ground-zero/#commentsWed, 21 May 2014 00:54:30 +0000http://blogs.edit.bloomberg.com/political-capital/?p=131264Updated at 8:48 and 10:48 am EDT, May 21 The front could not be clearer than it is in Kentucky. The stakes couldn’t be much higher than they are for Washington. The swift and expected victories of two candidates for the Senate in their party primaries tonight — Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s trouncing of […]

Senate Republican Leader Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and his wife Elaine Chao wave to supporters after a victory celebration on May 20, 2014 in Louisville, Kentucky.

Updated at 8:48 and 10:48 am EDT, May 21

The front could not be clearer than it is in Kentucky.

The stakes couldn’t be much higher than they are for Washington.

The swift and expected victories of two candidates for the Senate in their party primaries tonight — Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s trouncing of a Tea Party-backed rival on the Republican side, and Kentucky Secretary of State Alison Lundergan Grimes’ never really contested Democratic nomination — drew instant responses:

— “We need Sen. McConnell in Washington to protect our Second Amendment freedoms,” said Chris Cox, chairman of the National Rifle Association Political Victory Fund in an e-mailed statement noting that the five-term senator holds an “A-plus” rating from the nation’s pre-eminent gun lobby, a rating “ reserved for a legislator with not only an excellent voting record on all critical NRA issues, but who has also made a vigorous effort to promote and defend he Second Amendment.”

— “Alison Lundergan Grimes is Kentucky’s future, and tonight she’s one big step closer to making Mitch McConnell and his 30 years of failure history,” said Stephanie Schriock, president of EMILY’s List, in an emailed statement noting that the Republican leader had presided over a shutdown of the federal government and asserting that “shutting him down is a top priority for the EMILY’s List community of over 3 million members.”

If the Republican Party didn’t want a “war on women,” it has one now — in a state that never has elected a woman to the Senate, a state that has sent and returned McConnell to Washington five times — though polling shows that public opinion has turned sharply against the seasoned minority leader.

And it’s a national battle: Should McConnell’s party win six Senate seats in other states where Democrats appear vulnerable this year — with most independent experts giving the GOP a better than even chance of winning those six seats — Republicans will control the Congress for the remainder of President Barack Obama’s second and final term. Yet that six-state sweep could be for naught should McConnell lose his own state and with it his leadership of either a minority or majority party in Washington.

Tonight is going to be historic for conservatives in KY. RETWEET if you voted to make Mitch the Majority Leader and fire Harry Reid! #kysen

The NRA, which is nothing if not committed to putting Republicans in charge of Congress, and EMILY’s List, the organization that funnels campaign contributions into the causes of women around the country, are but two of the outside organizations which stand to make Kentucky’s 2014 Senate race a $100-million-plus proposition.

At the start, it’s a dead heat.

An average of the last four public polls run on the McConnell-Grimes contest in Kentucky shows them less than one-point apart: All four polls revealed a one-point margin between the two — three leaning toward McConnell, one toward Grimes — all of which adds up to as close to a perfect statistical tie as four separate polls will ever produce.

Here’s a sobering footnote for the minority leader:

Asked in the “Bluegrass Poll” run by the Courier-Journal in Louisville their opinion of the five-term senator’s work in Washington, 56 percent of voters surveyed said they disapprove of the job he’s done and 34 percent approve. Asked about the job Grimes is doing as secretary of state, 46 percent said they approve, 32 percent disapprove. The survey of 1,782 registered voters May 15-17 carries a possible margin of error of plus or minus 2.6 percent.

Yet McConnell holds one significant advantage heading into a heated contest with Grimes: The notoriously low voter-turnout of midterm elections, particularly among the younger and minority voters on whom Democrats count for electoral victories. The polls portraying a dead heat belie who among those voters actually will turn out.

In addition, McConnell is signaling an aggressive campaign against his challenger. And he is attempting to nationalize the contest in his own terms.

“My opponent is in the race because Barack Obama and Harry Reid want her in the race,” McConnell said at his election night rally, suggesting there’s a reason why all the “Hollywood liberals” are sending Grimes checks. “A vote for my opponent is a vote for Obamacare and the president who sold it to us on a mountain of lies.”

Grimes is finding her own campaign rhythm, however, and she immediately answered McConnell in her own election night rally. “I am not a rubber stamp and I am not a cheerleader,” Grimes said. “I am a strong Kentucky woman who is an independent thinker who, when I’m Kentucky’s next senator, the decisions I make will be what’s best for the people of the Commonwealth of Kentucky, not partisan interests… I will answer to the people of Kentucky. I won’t answer to the president no matter who he or she might be.”

This race, she rhetorically told McConnell, is “between you and me.”

This is only the beginning. The two candidates and the groups supporting them have nearly six months to tip the balance in favor of a Republican-run Senate or a Democratic-run one — making this simply the most significant Senate race of all this year.

]]>http://go.bloomberg.com/political-capital/2014-05-20/mcconnell-grimes-ground-zero/feed/0Gun-play in Campaign Ads: ‘Give Me a Shot’http://go.bloomberg.com/political-capital/2014-05-06/gun-play-campaign-ads-give-shot/
http://go.bloomberg.com/political-capital/2014-05-06/gun-play-campaign-ads-give-shot/#commentsTue, 06 May 2014 14:39:47 +0000http://blogs.edit.bloomberg.com/political-capital/?p=130044Guns on the street are one thing. Guns are firing in campaign ads, too. Not since Joe Manchin loaded his hunting rifle and unloaded it on a target for the voters of West Virginia has a candidate for the U.S. Senate given firearms such a prominent role in a campaign ad. Joni Ernst, an Iraq […]

Not since Joe Manchin loaded his hunting rifle and unloaded it on a target for the voters of West Virginia has a candidate for the U.S. Senate given firearms such a prominent role in a campaign ad.

Joni Ernst, an Iraq war veteran and front-runner in a crowded field for the Republican Senate nomination in Iowa, pledges to “ take aim at wasteful spending.” What’s more, says the narrator of the ad picturing Ernst at a firing range and then turning her handgun on the camera: “Once she sets her sights on Obamacare, Joni’s gonna unload.”

“Give me a shot,” Ernst says to viewers in closing.

She has some competition on this front in Iowa, where Sen. Tom Harkin’s retirement has offered a rare opening for Iowans.

Bob Quast, an independent candidate for the Senate, is campaigning with a web video-warning to anyone who comes to his front door with the intention of harming “my girls.” He hoists his handgun wth a 15-shot clip: “I’m gonna use my Glock to blow your balls off.”

Ernst, the “mom, farm-girl and lieutenant colonel who carries more than just lipstick in her purse,” isn’t the first to “unload” on the president’s health-care law in the midterm election campaigns underway.

Will Brooke, a businessman running for Congress in Alabama, placed the actual text of the Affordable Care Act in the sights of first a Glock, then a hunting rifle and finally an assault weapon. The bill is so thick, it turns out, that his ammo couldn’t penetrate it.

He finally loaded the bill into a wood-chipper.

Connecting with the Second Amendment crowd and Obamacare opponents in one shot may seem an easy trick. Especially for these Republican candidates.

Courting gun-owners in general is somewhat tougher for Democrats. In Kentucky, Secretary of State Alison Lundergan Grimes hauled out a rifle for a Twitter challenge to the incumbent Sen. Mitch McConnell, minority leader of the Senate: “Come shoot with me at the range any day.”

Whenever he’s not busy pandering to DC lobbyists, I welcome Sen. McConnell to come shoot with me at the range any day pic.twitter.com/p00Zm3fGks

It was Manchin, the former Democratic governor of West Virginia running for the Senate, who vowed to protect voters’ Second Amendment rights and “repeal the bad parts of Obamacare.” In the state known for its coal mines, he unloaded his gun on the “Cap and Trade” energy bill.

Manchin also has walked a not-so-fine line between his NRA endorsement, touted in his ads, and his advocacy for gun safety — he was one of the bipartisan sponsors of a bill improving background checks for gun-buyers in the aftermath of the Newtown, Connecticut, schoolhouse shootings.

He cradled that hunting rifle in another ad promoting his “courage” for standing up to the gun lobby while defending gun-owners’ rights.

]]>http://go.bloomberg.com/political-capital/2014-05-06/gun-play-campaign-ads-give-shot/feed/0Biden’s Bid for Women Voters — Men Lost to Republicans?http://go.bloomberg.com/political-capital/2014-05-01/bidens-bid-women-voters-men-lost-democrats/
http://go.bloomberg.com/political-capital/2014-05-01/bidens-bid-women-voters-men-lost-democrats/#commentsThu, 01 May 2014 15:08:25 +0000http://blogs.edit.bloomberg.com/political-capital/?p=129640Joe Biden has been wise to violence against women for a long time now. Just as Bill Clinton, whose wife may be gearing up for a presidential campaign in 2016, has reminded everyone this week that he was aboard the income inequality bandwagon a long time ago, Biden, who may be gearing up for a […]

Vice President Joe Biden laughs with Marion Mims, right, after giving her a kiss as she took his order upon sitting down with Judy Dorsett, left, and Tarri Johnson, right, at Mary Mac’s Tea Room, on March 4, 2014, in Atlanta.

Joe Biden has been wise to violence against women for a long time now.

Just as Bill Clinton, whose wife may be gearing up for a presidential campaign in 2016, has reminded everyone this week that he was aboard the income inequality bandwagon a long time ago, Biden, who may be gearing up for a presidential campaign in 2016, has brought out the political photo album:

There’s no question that an issue as important as this transcends politics. The White House this week spoke out on the need for colleges to curtail campus violence.

Yet there’s also no question that Biden, should he challenge Clinton, will face an uphill fight for the women’s vote in any Democratic primaries — or, should Clinton give Biden and others in their party a clearer path by taking a pass on 2016, the women’s vote will be just as hard-fought.

Then there is that matter of the general election, in which Republicans are staking what they hope will be a lasting claim for the white male vote.

Sarah Palin, in an address to the National Rifle Association last week in which she called water-boarding “the way we baptize terrorists,” also made fun of a comment that Biden had made in his own way of seeking a connection to the Second Amendment alliance.

“If you want to protect yourself, get a double-barreled shotgun. I promise you, as I told my wife, we live in an area that’s wooded and somewhat secluded. I said, Jill, if there’s ever a problem, just walk out on the balcony here, walk out, put [up] that double barreled shotgun and fire two blasts outside the house.”

Palin, at the NRA conference in Indianapolis on April 26, mocked Biden for the idea of firing warning shots into the air –“Joe Squirt Gun,” the erstwhile Republican candidate for vice president called the Democratic vice president. “That’s fine … if your rapist is a bird,” Palin said, triggering laughter. “Gals, you know, nowadays, ammo is expensive. Don’t waste a bullet on a warning shot.”

President Barack Obama and Biden won the women’s vote by 12 percentage points in 2012. They lost the men’s vote by 8 percentage points. The 20-point gap between the two was the largest since Gallup started measuring such things in 1952.

However the 2016 field shapes up, and whether Biden is part of it or not, the intensity of the fight for both votes is certain to spur a rhetoric of its own unique brand.

The way the parties confront violence in society could have a lot to do with their appeal. In some ways, a Republican courting of gun owners aimed at securing the male vote could backfire with the female vote.

Palin was also mocking Attorney General Eric Holder in her speech at the NRA — ridiculing his idea about electronic bracelets enabling only the owner of a gun to fire it. She wears three bracelets, she said. One celebrates 1791, the year the Bill of Rights was ratified.

“If you control oil, you control an economy,” Palin told her audience. “If you control money, you control commerce. But if you control arms, you control the people… And that is what they’re trying to do.”

Obama and Biden didn’t get very far with their gun-safety agenda following the slaughter of 20 schoolchildren in Newtown, Connecticut, but they should find a readier constituency in their campaign against violence against women.

]]>http://go.bloomberg.com/political-capital/2014-05-01/bidens-bid-women-voters-men-lost-democrats/feed/0Palin Promoting Griffin, ex-Aide, in North Carolinahttp://go.bloomberg.com/political-capital/2014-04-29/palin-backs-ex-campaign-aide-griffin-north-carolina/
http://go.bloomberg.com/political-capital/2014-04-29/palin-backs-ex-campaign-aide-griffin-north-carolina/#commentsTue, 29 Apr 2014 13:23:20 +0000http://blogs.edit.bloomberg.com/political-capital/?p=129153Sarah Palin is intervening in a North Carolina Republican primary on behalf of Taylor Griffin, a House candidate who worked on her campaign for the vice presidency. “In Washington, we need you to stay true to your beliefs of smaller government, protecting life and furthering conservative principles,” Palin said in a note yesterday to Griffin, […]

Sarah Palin is intervening in a North Carolina Republican primary on behalf of Taylor Griffin, a House candidate who worked on her campaign for the vice presidency.

“In Washington, we need you to stay true to your beliefs of smaller government, protecting life and furthering conservative principles,” Palin said in a note yesterday to Griffin, according to a release from Griffin’s campaign early this morning. Palin and her husband Todd authorized her political action committee, Sarah PAC, to send Griffin’s campaign a donation, according to the release.

Griffin, a former Treasury Department aide in George W. Bush’s administration, was a spokesman for Palin and the 2008 Republican White House ticket led by Arizona Sen. John McCain.

Palin has been appearing at rally-like conferences, including the National Rifle Association’s annual gathering last weekend in Indianapolis. “Waterboarding is how we baptize terrorists,” she said there.

Griffin is trying to unseat Rep. Walter Jones on May 6 in North Carolina’s 3rd District, a Republican-leaning coastal area running from the Virginia border south to Wilmington.

The PACs of JPMorgan Chase & Co., Bank of America Corp. and Wells Fargo & Co. were early backers of Griffin’s campaign, as Bloomberg News reported in February after visiting the district. Billionaire Paul Singer and executives with his New York-based investment firm Elliott Management Corp. also have given money to Griffin, a co-founder of a Washington-based consulting group that includes some banks and trade groups among its clients.

Jones’s supporters have touted the 20-year incumbent’s longstanding ties to eastern North Carolina, his constituent-services operation and his votes against abortion, gun control and increases in the debt limit. His campaign has portrayed Griffin as a D.C. insider who moved to the district last year to run for office.

Palin’s PAC donated to 11 Republican candidates and committees in this year’s first quarter, with a focus on aiding Republican women and candidates aligned with the limited-government Tea Party movement.

]]>http://go.bloomberg.com/political-capital/2014-04-29/palin-backs-ex-campaign-aide-griffin-north-carolina/feed/0Simpson Bags NRA Backing in Idahohttp://go.bloomberg.com/political-capital/2014-03-17/simpson-bags-nra-backing-in-idaho/
http://go.bloomberg.com/political-capital/2014-03-17/simpson-bags-nra-backing-in-idaho/#commentsMon, 17 Mar 2014 18:08:41 +0000http://blogs.edit.bloomberg.com/political-capital/?p=124561Idaho Rep. Mike Simpson, whose Republican primary challenger is backed by the Club ForGrowth, today bagged the endorsement of the National Rifle Association Political Victory Fund. David Keene, a former president of the National Rifle Association, delivered the group’s endorsement during an appearance at an Idaho Falls restaurant, the political action fund said today in […]

Rep. Mike Simpson, R-Idaho, during the House Appropriations Committee to snack on during the markup of a fiscal 2012 interior and environment draft bill.

Idaho Rep. Mike Simpson, whose Republican primary challenger is backed by the Club ForGrowth, today bagged the endorsement of the National Rifle Association Political Victory Fund.

David Keene, a former president of the National Rifle Association, delivered the group’s endorsement during an appearance at an Idaho Falls restaurant, the political action fund said today in a statement.

Simpson, an eight-term House member whose credentials as a Republican are being questioned by challenger Bryan Smith, was hailed by Keene as “a true conservative leader” who “continues to lead the way on vital firearm, hunting and self- defense reforms,” according to the group’s statement.

The primary is May 20.

The NRA, which gives Simpson its highest — A+ — rating, cited his support for federal legislation to expand the rights of people with permits to carry concealed handguns to take their weapons to other states.

The Club for Growth, meanwhile, released a new video calling Simpson a RINO — Republican In Name Only. It features clips of Simpson defending his advocacy of raising more revenue during the failed budget deliberations in 2011.

The video shows Simpson being asked by Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday about his Americans for Tax Reform pledge not to raise taxes. Simpson said: “I signed that in 1998 when I first ran, I didn’t know I was signing a marriage agreement that would last forever.”

The group didn’t include Simpson’s additional statement in the broadcast that “a majority of members of Congress understand that you have to have addition revenue” to close the budget deficit. That’s because tax revenue had decreased from 18 percent to 14 percent of gross domestic product as expenditures have risen from 19 percent to 25 percent of GDP, Simpson said.

]]>http://go.bloomberg.com/political-capital/2014-03-17/simpson-bags-nra-backing-in-idaho/feed/0Giffords Soaring at ‘Top of the Sky’http://go.bloomberg.com/political-capital/2014-01-08/giffords-soaring-at-top-of-the-sky/
http://go.bloomberg.com/political-capital/2014-01-08/giffords-soaring-at-top-of-the-sky/#commentsWed, 08 Jan 2014 16:56:11 +0000http://blogs.edit.bloomberg.com/political-capital/?p=116129Updated at 4:05 pm EST It was three years ago today that a gunman stepped into a small crowd where an Arizona congresswoman was greeting constituents and opened fire. Gabby Giffords survived a devastating bullet to the head, but six of her constituents died that day in Tucson. In the three years since, she and […]

Former congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, right, and Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz, a Democrat from Florida and chair of the Democratic National Committee, at the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte in this Sept. 6, 2012 file photo.

Updated at 4:05 pm EST

It was three years ago today that a gunman stepped into a small crowd where an Arizona congresswoman was greeting constituents and opened fire.

Gabby Giffords survived a devastating bullet to the head, but six of her constituents died that day in Tucson. In the three years since, she and her husband, retired astronaut and Navy combat pilot Mark Kelly, have pressed their case for tougher gun controls from a Congress unmoved by shootings even more deadly, most notably the schoolhouse killings of 20 children and six educators in Newtown, Connecticut, in 2012.

It’s been step by step since I was shot three years ago. I’ve overcome a lot. Progress has come from working hard.

“Three years ago, dispatched to an almost certain death by an assassin’s bullet, I was allowed the opportunity for a new life. I had planned to spend my 40s continuing my public service and starting a family. I thought that by fighting for the people I cared about and loving those close to me, I could leave the world a better place. And that would be enough.” `

`Instead, I’ve spent the past three years learning how to talk again, how to walk again. I had to learn to sign my name with my left hand. It’s gritty, painful, frustrating work, every day. Rehab is endlessly repetitive. And it’s never easy, because once you’ve mastered some movement or action or word, no matter how small, you move on to the next. You never rest.”

The group she and her husband founded, Americans for Responsible Solutions, raised $6.6 million in the first half of 2013, including $250,000 from retired New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg, c0-founder and majority owner of Bloomberg LP, parent company of Bloomberg News. The group spent $1.9 million on all expenses though hasn’t reported yet what it spent on lobbying after registering late last year. It will report its spending in the second half of the year by Jan. 31.

Their cause may be mired in a deadlocked Congress reluctant to antagonize the National Rifle Association.

But today, the ex-astronaut’s wife was soaring.

Southern Arizona will look beautiful & peaceful from the top of the sky. — Gabrielle Giffords (@GabbyGiffords) January 8, 2014

Giffords got a lot of encouragement for this jump — and invited one well-wisher to join her next time.

]]>http://go.bloomberg.com/political-capital/2014-01-08/giffords-soaring-at-top-of-the-sky/feed/0NRA Raised $256 Million Last Yearhttp://go.bloomberg.com/political-capital/2013-12-19/nra-raised-256-million-last-year/
http://go.bloomberg.com/political-capital/2013-12-19/nra-raised-256-million-last-year/#commentsThu, 19 Dec 2013 16:21:44 +0000http://blogs.edit.bloomberg.com/political-capital/?p=114213The National Rifle Association, the country’s largest and most powerful gun lobby, raised $256 million in 2012, more than in any other year of the Obama administration. Last year included the presidential election and mass shootings at a movie theater in Aurora, Colorado, and an elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut. Those crimes touched off a […]

The National Rifle Association, the country’s largest and most powerful gun lobby, raised $256 million in 2012, more than in any other year of the Obama administration.

Last year included the presidential election and mass shootings at a movie theater in Aurora, Colorado, and an elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut. Those crimes touched off a national gun-rights debate that reached a crescendo in April, when the U.S. Senate voted down a plan to expand background checks on firearms sales.

The Fairfax, Virginia-based NRA spends at least $17 million a year on legislative services including lobbying. It strongly opposed the background-check measure and continues to fight state-level proposals across the country.

The NRA is a network of entities; its main organization, a nonprofit, this week responded to a Bloomberg News request for its most recent tax filings. An account of its 2013 financial activity won’t be available until the end of next year.

The 2012 revenue was $37 million higher than the previous year and also topped 2010 and 2009. As President Barack Obama, an advocate for tougher gun controls, first campaigned for the office in 2008, the NRA raised $247 million.

Membership dues accounted for $108 million of the NRA’s revenue last year. Another $73 million came from contributions, the tax documents show. Because it is a nonprofit, the NRA is not required to name its donors. Tax documents show three individuals gave contributions of $3 million or more. Another 15 individual donors wrote checks of between $100,000 and $942,650.

The NRA also makes money through advertising in its magazines and websites and the sales of services and goods, such as toasters. Companies, including those that produce firearms and ammunition, support the NRA through corporate giving programs.

Wayne LaPierre, the NRA’s chief executive officer, received $974,887 in compensation last year, and chief lobbyist Chris Cox earned $665,799, the tax documents show. The group’s political committees spent more than $20 million in the 2012 federal elections, Federal Election Commission records show.

]]>http://go.bloomberg.com/political-capital/2013-12-19/nra-raised-256-million-last-year/feed/0Connecticut Advances in Gun Laws, Rankings Show Year After Newtownhttp://go.bloomberg.com/political-capital/2013-12-09/connecticut-advances-in-toughest-guns-rankings-show-year-after-newtwon/
http://go.bloomberg.com/political-capital/2013-12-09/connecticut-advances-in-toughest-guns-rankings-show-year-after-newtwon/#commentsMon, 09 Dec 2013 13:00:51 +0000http://blogs.edit.bloomberg.com/political-capital/?p=112904Connecticut, where an elementary school shooting left 20 children and six educators dead almost a year ago, now has the nation’s second strongest gun laws, according to a scorecard comparing state gun laws that will be released later today by The Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence and The Brady Campaign. California, which passed 10 […]

Pictures of Newtown Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting victims are displayed as Senate Judiciary Committee chairperson Dianne Feinstein speaks during a hearing on ‘The Assault Weapons Ban of 2013′ at the Hart Senate Office Building in Washington, DC, on February 27, 2013.

Connecticut, where an elementary school shooting left 20 children and six educators dead almost a year ago, now has the nation’s second strongest gun laws, according to a scorecard comparing state gun laws that will be released later today by The Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence and The Brady Campaign.

California, which passed 10 new gun control laws this year, remained atop the list, as it has since the Law Center started its score card in 2010. This is the first year the San Francisco-based center teamed with the Washington-based Brady Center, which has compiled a separate list since 2007.

Other states where legislatures approved wide-ranging restrictions on gun purchases moved up in the rankings, including Maryland and New York, which are now in the fourth and fifth slots. Connecticut moved up after approving a package that expanded background checks, prohibited military style firearms and limiting magazine sizes.

“We’ve had an unprecedented number of states pass major gun reform this year,” said Brian Malte, director of legislation and mobilization at The Brady Campaign. “We’re very happy about that, we think that sends a major message to Congress.”

New Jersey slid from second to third-ranked in the toughest gun laws, with Gov. Chris Christie’s vetoes of legislation, including a measure that would have required background checks for private firearms sales.

Last year’s Dec. 14 shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, launched the first national push for stronger gun laws in 20 years. Advocates fell short on the federal level, where they couldn’t gather enough votes in the Senate to pass a background check law supported by President Barack Obama.

They fared better in state legislatures, where eight passed major overhauls to their gun laws, according to the Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence, which tracks state gun laws. Six of those were states that already were ranked in the top ten strongest gun laws last year.

“It is a healthy competition for states to vying for the strongest gun laws in the country,” said Malte.

Gun rights advocates backed by the National Rifle Association also had successes in state legislatures, and last year the places with the weakest restrictions moved to further loosen their rules. Arizona became the state with the weakest firearms restrictions after passing laws that prohibit keeping records of gun purchases and one preventing law enforcement agencies from destroying guns acquired via buy-back programs.

Seven states approved laws that allow staff – or in some places citizens – to carry firearms in elementary schools, according to the Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence.

The other states with the weakest rules are Alaska, Wyoming, South Dakota and Vermont, according to the new ranking.

]]>http://go.bloomberg.com/political-capital/2013-12-09/connecticut-advances-in-toughest-guns-rankings-show-year-after-newtwon/feed/0Grimes Got Her Guns, McConnell Gets NRA Awardhttp://go.bloomberg.com/political-capital/2013-11-08/grimes-got-her-guns-mcconnell-gets-nra-award/
http://go.bloomberg.com/political-capital/2013-11-08/grimes-got-her-guns-mcconnell-gets-nra-award/#commentsFri, 08 Nov 2013 18:34:37 +0000http://blogs.edit.bloomberg.com/political-capital/?p=109536We think we’re going to enjoy the Kentucky Senate race for the sheer Americana of the attempt of a sitting Democratic secretary of state to unseat the minority leader of the U.S. Senate and all the gunplay that goes with it. Alison Lundergan Grimes says she and her husband and family like to hut and […]

The ‘Wall of Guns’ during the 2013 NRA Annual Meeting and Exhibits on May 4, 2013 in Houston, Texas.

We think we’re going to enjoy the Kentucky Senate race for the sheer Americana of the attempt of a sitting Democratic secretary of state to unseat the minority leader of the U.S. Senate and all the gunplay that goes with it.

Alison Lundergan Grimes says she and her husband and family like to hut and shoot. As a contributor to the National Rifle Association, “Alison’s position remains clear that she is a strong supporter of the Second Amendment,” Grimes’ spokeswoman Charly Norton said in an email to the Lexington Herald-Leader. “She is on record with the NRA and will always fight to protect Kentuckians’ right to bear arms. Anyone who suggests otherwise is simply playing politics.”

The NRA claims that Grimes’ claims of being a friend to gun-owners are “empty campaign promises.” The NRA’s Chris Cox told the paper: “While she may make empty campaign promises to support Second Amendment rights, her actions say something completely different. Kentuckians deserve better.”

She will get her official NRA grade sometime in the middle of 2014. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, for his part, was set to receive the NRA’s Defender of Freedom Award in Louisville today. The NRA, which spent more than $16 million in the 2012 elections, is heavily involved in McConnell’s re-election effort.

Cox tells the Kentucky paper: “We’re going to make sure that gun owners in Kentucky understand that they have a champion representing them in the United States Senate.”

To which Grimes tweets today:

Whenever he’s not busy pandering to DC lobbyists, I welcome Sen. McConnell to come shoot with me at the range any day pic.twitter.com/p00Zm3fGks

]]>http://go.bloomberg.com/political-capital/2013-11-08/grimes-got-her-guns-mcconnell-gets-nra-award/feed/0NRA Targets Manchin, A-Rated Once, Gun Debate Grows Personalhttp://go.bloomberg.com/political-capital/2013-06-13/nra-targets-manchin-a-rated-nra-member-as-gun-debate-grows-personal/
http://go.bloomberg.com/political-capital/2013-06-13/nra-targets-manchin-a-rated-nra-member-as-gun-debate-grows-personal/#commentsThu, 13 Jun 2013 14:21:53 +0000http://blogs.edit.bloomberg.com/political-capital/?p=86062The National Rifle Association is out with a new television ad criticizing West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin for “working with” New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and President Barack Obama to push for stricter gun controls. “Concerned? You should be,” a narrator in the 30-second ad running in the senator’s home state says. “Tell Senator Manchin […]

The National Rifle Association (NRA) Annual Convention on May 4, 2013 in Houston, Texas.

The National Rifle Association is out with a new television ad criticizing West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin for “working with” New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and President Barack Obama to push for stricter gun controls.

“Concerned? You should be,” a narrator in the 30-second ad running in the senator’s home state says. “Tell Senator Manchin to honor his commitment to the Second Amendment and reject the Obama-Bloomberg gun control agenda.”

Manchin, a Democratic gun enthusiast who until now had a A rating from the gun rights lobbying group, helped write a compromise measure that would have expanded background checks to cover firearms purchased at gun shows and online.

In addition to the TV ad about Manchin, the NRA has a new radio ad in Arkansas defending Senator Mark Pryor, according to the Associated Press. Pryor is one of four Democrats who voted against the background check bill. The ad urges voters to thank Pryor for supporting gun rights and for not listening to the mayor of New York City, the AP reported.

Manchin worked with Pennsylvania Sen. Pat Toomey, a Republican, on the background checks measure. Yesterday in Washington, Manchin met with families of the 20 children shot to death last December at an elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut — a crime that touched off the current gun debate.

The Manchin-Toomey amendment failed on April 17.

Since then, the New York mayor has been calling out senators — Democrats and Republicans alike — for voting against expanded background checks, a proposal that polls show a majority of Americans support. Mayors Against Illegal Guns, a nonprofit organization that Mayor Bloomberg co-founded and funds, has aired ads chastising Republican Senator Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire and Republican Senator Jeff Flake of Arizona for voting against The Manchin-Toomey plan.

The NRA has been running ads in New Hampshire thanking Ayotte for her support of gun rights.

Yesterday, Bloomberg mailed a letter to more than 1,000 New York City donors asking them to withhold campaign contributions to Pryor and the other three Democratic senators who voted against the measure. It was another sign of the mayor’s growing interest in national politics, particularly when it comes to guns. He has spent at least $28 million of his personal fortune in the past year on campaign contributions and issues ads.

The mayor, 71 and a political independent, is founder and majority owner of Bloomberg News parent Bloomberg LP.